The Dead Leave Holes

Mark Bastien was a Toronto-based journalist.

Ben Phillips is obsessed with death, and this obsession is played out in The Dead Leave Holes, a slim volume of poems from Unfinished Monument Press.

Murder is everywhere in this tiresome collection. People shoot at each other, do major drugs, love, hurt, and then try to escape this crazy-terrible world in which we live. Pianist Glenn Gould, with his “elderly youth forever wrapped against the chill” falls between the keys; Tennessee Williams shows up “dead on the late news” in a rubber body bag; even the Americans and Soviets make an appearance with their “darkness obsessed toys.”

The problem with this book is the author’s flippant, accusing tone. It seems the reader is responsible for the hell-hole world Phillips creates. The author employs obvious, overworked examples here: a young black man shot dead by a racist white cop, famine and massacre in the Third World. He damns the reader for the sorry state of the world. At least Phillips doesn’t blame the reader for his simplistic, cloying language: blood mourning, lost loves and hates, the whispered secret of compassion.

Reading this collection is like watching a 20-hour television telethon for a disease you’ve never heard of: the poems are paraded out, the author rants about suffering, and then he expects you to give, give, give. It’s a numbing, irritating experience.